A New Approach To The US Election Process

Amy and I were talking about the election process during our vacation. Both of us dislike the electoral college process and have concluded that the cycle is way too long, the primaries are stupid, and the amount of money being spent is totally obscene. We are also deeply tired of all of the endless partisan crap.

So I came up with a new process. How’s this?

There is one election. No primaries. No parties. As many people can enter as they’d like.

The winner is whomever gets over 50% of the votes.

The election is a multi-day process. On day one, all voters vote from the entire pool of candidates. If someone gets more than 50% of the votes they win. If no one gets > 50%, then anyone with > 10% of the votes gets to be on the ballot for day two. Repeat – this time only people that get > 20% of the votes get to be on the ballot on day 3. If day 3 doesn’t have a winner, the ballot is now between anyone with > 30% of the votes. Yes – there’s a slight risk that no one will get over the minimum threshold on day 1, but assuming someone does, it should work.

The winner of the most popular votes is president. #2 is vice president.